


Victory

by Softlight



Category: RWBY
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28959222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Softlight/pseuds/Softlight
Summary: Nikos, they say when they meet her, their eyes suffocating her, did you know that means victory?
Comments: 12
Kudos: 18





	Victory

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling some Pyrrha angst. I wrote this really fast, really quick, just for fun and as a warm up but I quite like it. I hope you do too!

In another time, perhaps another world entirely, the word _Nikos_ was derived from the goddess of victory. She’s never liked her last name. Not because it sounds wrong or because she’s not proud of her family, she is, but because she knows what it means.

_Nikos_ , they say when they meet her, their eyes suffocating her, _did you know that means victory_?

As if she could ever forget it with how much she’s reminded of it. So she smiles weakly and nods and pretends that she doesn’t hate it.

Victory. As if destiny decreed that she was to be victorious in every thing she attempts, as if she was born to be a winner, a victor. As if she was destined to be extraordinary. 

She knows she should be grateful. There are worse fates, after all, than success. But she practices and works and tries so hard, so damn hard, and no matter how hard she tries, her win is inevitable. As if everyone who faces her has ceded to her before the battle has even begun.

She tries. She works, hard. She’s trained and trained and trained for years, and it has always been easy and natural and right. Like she was made for this.

(She wonders if that was the first sign.)

She accepted her fate as a warrior, as a huntress, the moment she held a weapon for the first time. The metal always sang to her, even before she unlocked her Semblance, and she’s heard their hymn to her for as long as she could remember. Making her weapons was a way of sealing her fate, of accepting it. Acceptance from the start, she never questioned it. Not really. Never questioned that she was born to fight.

Born to fight, yes. Born to win, she thought. She really thought.

Victory, though, doesn’t mean perfection. It casts a glamour of it, a sheen to her that posits her on a pedestal, always just out of reach. She’s not perfect, she knows it, and, sure, the facade helps in battle, the confidence helps, but everything is harder. 

He didn’t see that pedestal. He somehow missed it entirely and reached out and grabbed her hand and tugged her off it. 

She knows he didn’t mean to. Jaune never really means to do anything, nothing besides being as kind as he can, but she knows he’s oblivious. She loves him for it.

(Sometimes she wonders if she loves _him_ or that obliviousness.)

And through Jaune there’s the rest of her team, the rest of her friends. Friends. Genuine, actual friends. Not just people eyeing her and vying for her hand like it was a blessing, like she would somehow tell them the secret to victory and they would overtake her place.

(She thinks if there ever was some blessing on her it’s now a curse.)

But friends. Friends who care about her and love _her_. Not what she can do. Not what she can do for them, beyond making pancakes. They love her, simple and clear. It would have been impossible to not love them back for it.

Ozpin asks her. It’s not an ask, but it’s not a demand. But she’s ready. 

She’s ready.

(Isn’t she? Wasn’t she?)

She knows. She knows before she’s asked that they want her, maybe even need her, for something. The decision isn’t much of a decision. Not when she’s thought she’s been destined to protect Remnant. Protector, not victor. Not a savior, not a celebrity, but herself. A great huntress, a good person, but nothing like this. Never something like this. 

But she’s ready, and what else can she do? 

(What else can she do?)

And then, once more, she’s on a pedestal. Maybe her friends can’t see it, don’t know about it yet, but they will. But even worse, she knows. She knows that if she does this, there’s no changing destiny. She’s never wanted to change her destiny before, not in any way that really mattered. She always thought destiny was destiny for a reason, that her destiny was a good one. But she doesn’t want it. Not like this.

What else can she do?

With the Maiden powers, she could do so much good. She could make change, she could protect, she could be better than herself. Better than herself. Isn’t that what she’s always trained for? Always training to be better, stronger, more. The best. Not out of a sense of competition, not out of compulsion, but out of need. She needs to be the best. How else can she fulfill her destiny? How else could she have been ready for this?

(Was she ready?)

(Wasn’t she?)

She knows she’ll accept before the fight. She knows it, but she can’t come to terms with it. And then Penny dies-

No.

And then _she_ kills, murders, slaughters Penny. She did it. She did it, and it’s her fault. Good, kind, sweet Penny. Gone and wrenched from this world by her hands.

She’s not a bad person. Brothers, she really hopes she’s not a bad person. No matter how hard the guilt twists in her and bile rises in her throat and she can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t think. But finally, _finally_ , her pedestal has cracked, and she’s brought down, but she never wanted it like this. Never, ever like this. But she is human now. She is fallible. She won, but she’s a failure.

But there’s a war on the horizon, and it’s dawn. It’s time. 

She knows betterment hurts. She knows how to tide herself to that agony, but becoming a Maiden is excruciating. The pain wipes her out and makes her almost forget the sourness in her mouth. 

And then she fails. Again.

Sending Jaune away hurts worse than her attempt to become a Maiden, but she won’t let anyone else suffer for her mistakes, her losses, her failures.

She still almost believes she can win when the first arrow hits. 

“Do you believe in destiny?”

“Yes.” 

The only answer. The only answer she knows. She’s a failure and a victor and herself. Destiny came for her, and she knows, through a distant fog, that there’s a bitter irony to it. The victor failing when she was needed most.

(When _she_ was needed.)

(When she was _needed_.)

There’s almost understanding in those eyes of embers. As if she, the woman who took and will take everything, knows what it is to be promised and forced and told who she is, who to be, what she must be. And there’s almost pity in those glowing embers. 

The bow forms. 

She knows it’s coming, but she can’t believe it. Can’t accept it.

This wasn’t meant to be her fate.

The arrow fires-

And then nothing. Sweet, burning nothing.

_Victory_. 

**Author's Note:**

> <3 <3 <3


End file.
